Funniest Joke in the World

NOTE: The
'Funniest Joke in the World' DOES NOT translate
into English. It's some made-up gibberish words mixed in
with some real German words in a proper sentence
structure, but it doesn't mean anything, so don't bother
trying to decipher it. Besides, if you managed that you'd
probably die laughing.

(Opening Scene: A suburban house in a boring looking
street. Zoom into upstairs window. Serious documentary music.
Interior of small room. A bent figure (Michael Palin)
huddles over a table, writing. He is surrounded by bits of paper.
The camera is situated facing the man as he writes with immense
concentration lining his unshaven face.)

Voice Over: This man is Ernest Scribbler... writer of
jokes. In a few moments, he win have written the funniest joke in
the world... and, as a consequence, he will die ... laughing.

(Ernest stops writing, pauses to look at what he has
written... a smile slowly spreads across his face, turning very,
very slowly to uncontrolled hysterical laughter... he staggers to
his feet and reels across room helpless with mounting mirth and
eventually collapses and dies on the floor.)

Voice Over: It was obvious that this joke was lethal... no
one could read it and live ...

(Ernest's mother (Eric Idle in drag)
enters. She sees him dead, she gives a little cry of horror and
bends over his body, weeping. Brokenly she notices the piece of
paper in his hand and picks it up and reads it between her sobs.
Immediately she breaks out into hysterical laughter, leaps three
feet into the air, and fa11s down dead without more ado. Cut to
news type shot of commentator standing in front of the house.)

Commentator: This morning, shortly after eleven o'clock,
comedy struck this little house in Dibley Road. Sudden ...violent
... comedy. Police have sealed off the area, and Scotland Yard's
crack inspector is with me now.

Inspector: I shall enter the house and attempt to remove
the joke.

(About now an upstairs window in the house is fiung
open and a doctor, rears his head out, hysterical with laughter,
and dies hanging over the window sill. The commentator and the
inspector look up and then continue as if they are used to such
sights.)

Inspector: I shall be aided by the sound of sombre music,
played on gramophone records, and also by the chanting of laments
by the men of Q Division ... (Inspector points to a
grouo of dour looking policemen standing nearby) The
atmosphere thus created should protect me in the eventuality of
me reading the joke. He gives a signal. The group of policemen
start groaning and chanting biblical laments. The Dead March is
heard. The inspector squares his shoulders and bravely starts
walking into the house.

Commentator: There goes a brave man. Whether he comes out
alive or not, this will surely be remembered as one of the most
courageous and gallant acts in police history.

(The inspector suddenly appears at the door, helpless
with laughter, holding the joke aloft. He collapses and dies. Cut
to film of army vans driving along dark roads.)

Voice Over: It was not long before the Army became
interested in the military potential of the Killer Joke. Under
top security, the joke was hurried to a meeting of Allied
Commanders at the Ministry of War.

(Cut to door at Ham House: Soldier on guard comes to
attention as dispatch rider hurries in carrying armoured box.
(Notice on door: 'Conference. No Admittance'.)
Dispatch nider rushes in. A door opens for him and closes behind
him. We hear a mighty roar of laughter... . series of doomphs as
the commanders hit the floor or table. Soldier outside does not
move a muscle.)

(Cut to a pillbox on the Salisbury Plain. Track in to
slit to see moustachioed top brass peering anxiously out.)

Voice Over: Top brass were impressed. Tests on Salisbury
Plain confirmed the joke's devastating effectiveness at a range
of up to fifty yards.

(Cut to shot looking out of slit in pillbox. Camera
zooms through slit to distance where a solitary figure is
standing on the windswept plain. He is a bespectacled, weedy
lance-corporal (Terry Jones) looking cold and
miserable. Pan across to fifty yards away where two helmeted
soldiers are at their positions beside a blackboard on an easel
covered with a cloth. Cut in to corporal's face- registening
complete lack of comprehension as well as stupidily. Man on top
of pillbox waves flag. The soldiers reveal the joke to the
corporal. He peers at it, thinks about its meaning, sniggers, and
dies. Two watching generals are very impressed.)

Generals: Fantastic.

Cut to a Colonel talking to camera.

Colonel: All through the winter of '43 we had translators
working, in joke-proof conditions, to try and produce a German
version of the joke. They worked on one word each for greater
safety. One of them saw two words of the joke and spent several
weeks in hospital. But apart from that things went pretty
quickly, and we soon had the joke by January, in a form which our
troops couldn't understand but which the Germans could.

(Cut to a trench in the Ardennes. Members of the joke
brigade are crouched holding pieces of paper with the joke on
them.)

Voice Over: So, on July 8th, I944, the joke was first told
to the enemy in the Ardennes...

(Pan out of the British trench across war-torn
landscape and come to rest where presumably the German trench is.
There is a pause and then a group of Germans rear up in
hysterics.)

Voice Over: It was a fantastic success. Over sixty thousand
times as powerful as Britain's great pre-war joke ...Cut to a
film of Chamberlain brandishing the 'Peace in our time' bit of
paper ... and one which Hider just couldn't match.

Film of Hitler rally. Hitler speaks; subtitles are
superimposed.
SUBTITLE: 'MY DOG'S GOT NO NOSE'
A young soldier responds:
SUBTITLE: HOW DOES HE SMELL?
Hitler speaks:
SUBTITLE: AWFUL'

Voice Over: In action it was deadly.

(Cut to a small squad with rifles making their way
through forest. Suddenly one of them sees something and gives
signal at which they all dive for cover. From the cover of a tree
he reads out joke.)

(They chant the joke. Germans are put to fight
laughing, some dropping to ground.)

Voice Over: The German casualties were appalling.

(Cut to a German hospital and a ward full of casualties
still laughing hysterically. Cut to Nazi interrogation room. An
officer from the joke bngade has a light shining in his face. A
Gestapo officer is interrogating him; another stands behind him.)

Nazi: Vott is the big joke?

Officer: I can only give you name, rank, and why did the
chicken cross the road?

Nazi: That's not funny! (slaps him)
I vant to know the joke.

Officer: All right. How do you make a Nazi cross?

Nazi: (momentarily fooled) I don't
know ... how do you make a Nazi cross?

Officer: Tread on his corns. (does so; the Nazi
hops in pain)

Nazi: Gott in Hiramell That's not funny! (mimes
cuffing him while the other Nazi claps his hands to provide the
sound effct) Now if you don't tell me the joke, I
shall hit you properly.

(The guard reels back and collapses laughing. British
officer makes his escape. Cut to a film of German scientists
working in laboratories.)

Voice Over: But at Peenemunde in the Autumn of '44, the
Germans were working on a joke of their own.

(A German general is seated at an imposing desk. Behind
him stands Otto, labelled 'A Different Gestapo Officer'.
Bespectacled German scientist/joke writer enters room. He clean
his throat and reads from card.)

(Radio bunts into 'Deutschland Uber Alles'. The couple
look at each other and then in blank amazement at the radio. Cut
to modern BBC 2 interview. The commentator in a woodland glade.)

Commentator (Eric Idle): In 1945
Peace broke out. It was the end of the Joke. Joke warfare was
banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention, and in I950
the last remaining copy of the joke was laid to rest here in the
Berkshire countryside, never to be told again.